Category: Prosecco diaries

Rainfall, when heavy, can wash away a year’s worth of work in the blink of an eye.

July was a warm and particularly dry month that kept us holding our breath. We were very fortunate: The month’s heavy rainstorms only did limited damage in our vineyards.

Being a grape grower means being conscious of the fact that a year’s worth of work could be washed away in just an instant. This is why every time there is a forecast for rainfall, our anxiety levels climbs and everything in our family’s life comes to a halt. We all hold our breath until the worst has past.

July 1 – We need to manage the vegetation. It becomes a problem when a plant falls on a vine following inclement weather.

July 2 – Today is our Fiat 500’s 60th birthday! 60 years since this popular car was introduced, a symbol of the economic revival in Italy after World War II.

July 6 – OpenDream was an art, culture, food and wine festival in Treviso. They used an abandoned industrial space for the event.

July 7 – Tilling our Prà Grande vineyard in Monfumo.

Speaking of the anxiety that comes when there are rainclouds on the horizon, an awful storm literally grazed the hill where we have our vineyard in Cornuda. The photo comes via Meteo Bassano e Pedemontana del Grappa.

July 12 – Labels for magnums of our Extra Dry are always applied by hand.

July 13 – It’s not just about vines! One of the important things about “zero kilometer” foodways is teaching future generations about the importance of the land. Just like our parents and grandparents taught us. It’s thanks to them that we are here today to tell our story.

July 17 – As our friend Camillo likes to say: There’s a difference between Prosecco with a capital P and prosecchino. Only a fool would think otherwise. (Pure, playful, confident, and ready to go. A beauty!)

Climate is changing in our neck of the woods. The rapid and extreme changes in weather are examples of that.

June was a very warm month, with temperatures higher than average. Conditions in the vineyards are relatively stable and there aren’t any major problems with vine disease.

At any rate, our work is becoming more and more challenging, year after year. We are learning to live with long periods of drought and sudden storms with lots of rainfall. At least that’s what it feels like.

June 1: That’s Terry and Greg Moore. Terry is Greg’s son and Greg is one of the founders of Moore Brothers Wine Company. They presented our wines at a tasting held at their wine shop in Brooklyn (Industry City) in New York.

Terry & Greg Moore: “ColFondo from Bele Casel was a huge hit!”

June 4: 50mm of rain in our Cornuda vineyard fell over just a few hours, after a long period of drought.

June 10: The Porta San Tomaso (Gate) in Treviso, one of the most beautiful city gates along the 16th-century walls of the city.

It was a real honor for us to be invited to the Telegraph Prosecco Festival, which was organized by Susy Atkins, a writer for the Sunday Telegraph’s “Stella” magazine. She has authored numerous books and she appears regularly as a wine expert on the BBC show “Sunday Kitchen.”

Bele Casel Asolo Prosecco Colfòndo 2015: “The vineyards, surrounded by pristine woods and landscapes, express all of their distinct character through this savory wine with delightful citrus notes.”

June 14: Our beautiful vineyard in Cornuda.

June 22: Glera bunches in Cornuda.

June 22: A death’s head hawkmoth caterpillar that will soon transform into a moth, known for its “skull of death” marking on its torso. This type of moth is becoming more and more rare because of the insecticide used here and because of the light pollution that apparently disturbs its reproduction and its sense of direction.

June 23: Tomorrow the Rally della Marca race will pass by our vineyards. And so we’re revving our engines in the meantime!

Just like every year, November is a month when we recharge so that we can begin one of the most important parts of our work: Pruning. And without a doubt, the best way to recharge is to participate in the FIVI wine fair. It’s one of those homes away from home for us, a place where we catch up with many of our friends. Here’s what else happened in November.

A lot of people think that once the harvest is done our work is through until we begin pruning again. But that’s not the case.

The month of October is important for our vines, especially for our vineyards in Cornuda, where we spray, mow the grasses, and do the work between the rows using a tractor.

October is time for cover crops!

As you can see in the video below, there’s a big difference between the ground where the tractor has passed over and the ground at the center of the row. The clods are more compact where the wheels have passed over the ground. And they are definitely less dense where the wheels don’t pass over the ground. It gives us great statisfaction to see that our efforts, however small, are making a difference. Even the denser clods are rich with small flowers and they are full of earthworms. They are indication of the soil’s richness. And they help to aerate, drain, and increase the quality of the soil.

October 4: We finally received the seeds for the cover crops fro 2016. This year we are going to start a project called “the colors of the land.” Stay tuned for some beautiful images!

October 5: We begin preparing the Cornuda vineyard for the cove crops. It’s really important for the soil in this vineyard.

The four phases are as follows:

1. We till the soil deep enough to drain out the water and to make it easier for the tractor to pass through.
2. We aerate the soil.
3. We prepare the mixture of seeds. The blend we have selected improves the soil structure. And since there are a number of flower seeds included, it is great for beekeeping.
4. We plant the seeds by hand so that we can avoid making the soil more compact by passing over it again with the tractor.

October 6: This is what happens to the soil when you till and aerate to prepare it to be planted with cover crop seeds. This is what we do to make our soil more fertile.

October 7: We plant the cover crop seeds by hand.

October 11: Just under a year ago, we bought an old and poorly maintained vineyard. It breaks are hearts to grub up these old dry vines that don’t bear any fruit anymore. But new vines will grow in their place in this splendid growing site.

October 21: We grub up dead vines on the hillside. This has to be done by hand using a spade.

October 22: Monfumo at dawn.

October 25: We’ve completed our work on the soil. Now we need to fix up broken stakes and wires.

We have some very important helpers this year. They are the third generation of Bele Casel.

September 10 – We have the great honor of spending a day with Melissa Brauer aka The Prosecco Queen who came directly from Australia. In July 2015 she wrote that Bele Casel is one of the best examples of Prosecco from Italy (photo taken at the Grand Hyatt Melbourne), perfectly balanced, not too sweet, with notes of pear and a slightly creamy texture. “Delicious!” she wrote.

Peronospora (downy mildew) is extremely difficult to combat if you don’t use chemicals in the vineyards.

After the 2013 vintage, which will be remembered for the concentrated rainfall in the spring, the 2014 vintage was truly horrible because of the never-ending rains at the end of the growing season. The 2015 vintage was marked by intense drought and very high summer temperatures. I’ll remember the 2016 vintage as one of the most challenging for growers who farm organically (you can follow the vintage month by month by keeping up with our winery vintage diary).

I spent a lot of time pondering over whether or not I should write this post. They say that a good salesperson should only talk about the company’s successes.

But I’m a believer in sincerity and transparency and this is why I have chosen to share this not-so-pleasant aspect of the work that we do.

The months of June and July were devastating. The rain really put our preparedness, our vineyards, and our monitoring of the vines to the test.

Until a few weeks ago, we were still very happy with the work we were doing. The amount of copper we were spraying was (and still is) within a healthy limit. Our goal in reducing the use of copper had been achieved and the percentage of damaged bunches was acceptable. This was probably due to the fact that in the area affected by rain, 10-20 percent of the spots on the leaves had been blocked thanks to the use of a natural product (K&A Oomisine). All in all, the vines were healthy.

But today, after the umpteenth visit to the vineyards, we realized that the situation is getting worse and our hearts just sank into the abyss.

We have fought using the few weapons that were available to us. But evidently, copper and terroir and know-how weren’t enough in a vintage like this one.

Our vineyards in Monfumo, Maser, and 3 of the six hectares in Cornuda have small, insignificant problems (for the moment). The remaining vineyards have serious peronospora damage as you can see from the bunch in the photograph.

The only thing we can do now is to try to stop the infection with a couple of back-to-back treatments in the hope that the copper, when applied in greater but still reasonable amounts, doesn’t create problems for the vegetation.

Organic farming in vintages like this one forces us to come to terms with the indisputable fact that the force of Mother Nature — my goodness — is not easy to counter.

We need to accept our partial defeat and we need to keep on learning.

And as my friend Paolo says, “you made it through 2014 and you’ll make through 2016 as well. Then you will become old and wise and then you will die. That’s how it always is. Paranoia doesn’t do anyone any good.”

California and Hawaii were so welcoming during our May visits. Excessive rainfall back home was worrisome.

May is the month of flowering, a very delicate period for the grape grower that forces us to keep our guard up high and spend many hours in the vineyards to make sure that everything is proceeding correctly. Having rot in the vineyards during this period is a gamble that Glera grapes can’t afford. We could risk having significant damage on the grape bunches. 255 milliliters of rain fell during this year in May. That’s a lot for this time of year.

May 2 – Serving and storing temperature is so important. That’s why we believe that the choice of the right wine fridge is essential.

May 4 – Today we realized that it wasn’t the right moment to use our we torcher. The hay from the manure we spread last fall could be very dangerous.

May 9 – From left, clockwise: Glera, Marzemina Bianca, and Rabbiosa.

May 16 – A tasting on the Island of the Roses (Isola delle Rose) in Venice.

At the same time, we were also in California for the beginning of a wine tasting tour. First stop was a tasting at the Italian-American museum in San Francisco.

And then we went to Biondivino, one of our favorite wine shops anywhere in the world.

May 20 – Lunch Valentino Santa Monica. We had the honor of meeting Piero Selvaggio, the man who changed Italian cuisine in the United States. Here’s a perfect pairing: Our Extra Brut with fried zucchini blossoms, cheese, and balsamic vinegar.

Then we went to Sotto to say hello to Christine Veys, the restaurant’s sommelier and general manager. They serve our ColFondo by the glass.

And we had dinner at a restaurant called Pistola, where our Extra Dry is served by the glass from magnums.

May 23 – The first day of our tastings in Hawaii in Honolulu. How could we not wear a necklace of orchids? It’s called a lei.

Dinner at The Pig and the Lady. Andrew Le, the chef did such a great job pairing our wines with really interesting dishes.

May 24 – Then we headed to Kauai, another one of the Hawaiian islands where we did a seminar and tasting at the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort.

May 26 – The last day in Hawaii. Tasting at the restaurant Spago at the Four Seasons on Maui.

May 27 – Flowering has begun in the vineyards in Caerano. If everything goes well, the harvest will begin during the first ten days of September. Here are the dates of flowering from past years:

This year we decided to change the type of soil improvement that we use. Instead of vegetal compost, we are using aged manure. We’ve had the impression that despite our better efforts to keep the soil not too compact, it keeps getting hard. That’s why we decided to use manure under the rows so that it will help keep the soil soft and loose.

April 4 – It seems like the first leaves sprout from one minute to the next while you’re not paying attention.

This year, unlike last year, we finished pruning early. And so we concentrated on other work we needed to do in the vineyards, like the replacement of dead vines, replacement of broken or crooked stakes, and work on the trellises.

In terms of the swelling up of the buds, we definitely late with respect to 2014 (roughly 10-15 days later) and 2015 (just a couple of days).

March 3 – A new project is underway. In a few months, we will have a new head stake for our vineyards that is truly unique.

March 3 – The skies are ablaze!

March 11 – Is there anything more beautiful to see that flowers that bloom between the rows?

March 15 – Planting vines in our vineyards in Cornuda.

March 15 – The first signs of spring in Monfumo.

March 16 – With the backdrop of Mount Grappa (a mountain that holds a sacred place in Italian history), the famous Canova Temple (located in Passagno, designed in the early 19th century by the famous sculptor Antonio Canova) and our super Cinquecento.

March 21 – They say that the grape grower’s master is the sky. We head home because of a sudden and unexpected rainstorm.

March 23 – Our work in the vineyard continues. We have finished replacing the head stakes with stakes taken from our woods.

March 24 – New life in the Asolo DOCG.

March 29 – The vines don’t really care about our worries and our fears. They continue to follow the rhythms of nature. The vines have been working for us for millennia. All they ask in return is a little bit of respect.